Biological Classification - a work in progress

[Sean Nash]

As you well know, reflection is important in our work in this course.  Carefully tracking our conceptual change on this particular topic will be a smart way to assure we progress in our learning.  Use the space below to log your current thinking about the practice of biological classification as we move through a series of learning events.  Here, commentary and conversation with others is important. 

However, logging direct replies back to your own reflections here is a slick way to record your metacognition (awareness and understanding of one's own thought processes) over time.  This is what we are looking for...  experiences that create changes in your understanding for the better.

Enjoy.
;)


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[Ally S]

Well, my first thoughts are as follows:

that picture: hilarious.

"jus' sayin'."

Anyway...

I've grown a liking to biological classification. When I was introduced to it freshman year, I was excited to learn more about it. I'm glad & excited that we are going in-depth with this subject. Because I think I've had some misconceptions.

When it comes to scientific names, I'd already known about how to write it: Genus species is the order you write it in, italics, latin. All that.
What I didn't know, was that things are more closely related based on genus rather than species. I had always thought that things are more closely related based on species. I was surprised when we discussed it when we talked about the trees.

I really enjoyed the shoe activity. It was interesting to me to hear everyone's opinion on the grouping of the different shoes. It was also interesting to me to hear opinions on what should be the basis for dividing before another (i.e., size before color, etc.). I liked the activity, though, because it put it into a simpler perspective for me. I'd much rather classify a group of shoes before insects any day. :)

When I worked on the assignment involving the classification of fish in New York State, I noticed some confusing & surprising things. If I was correct with all of my answers, it was very interesting. Some of the fish that had the same name had no physical characteristics that stuck out to me. But, then again, I could be wrong on classifying some..




So..there's my reflection!

:)

[Shandis Cruz]

Ahh biological classification, such an interesting topic! But really, it is. Going into this unit I had a pretty good idea about what it "was" kind of the general info. I will admit though that this has always been a unit that drives me crazy, its far to organized for my taste, but there's not much that I can do about that, no is there?

BUT I will say that I did enjoy the shoe activity, sometimes I just wanted to do it myself and create my own little organization, but group work is important. Haha. While doing that particular activity I kept thinking of what was embedded in my head freshman year: kingdom, phylum, class, order, family, genius, species. This was literally stuck in my head like an annoying song that you can't stop singing for days.

This was beneficial when we had to classify buttons, which, wasn't that horrible by the way. The groups were much smaller, so it was much easier to come to a consciousness. All in all, I'm really just becoming much more familiar with this subject! :)

[Ally S]

I agree with the organization comment. This is slightly frustrating to me, due to the fact that it is based around organization.

But I guess that's something I'll have to look past! :)

[Miranda Lynn Stanton]

Classification is puting items into gropups that are the same and you keep on breaking the groups down. Like the shoes we had. We had a group of shoes and the groups got smaller and smaller the more they got classified. When you name something the species come last and the genus comes first.
For the button activity we did the group i was in narrowed it down to where there was one button in each group. When Mr. Nash gave us the other buttons we had to change some of the names to our catagories but we got it.
The fish activity we had to find what catagory the fish went it. It took me a while to figure it out.

[Aziz Siddikov]

I very liked the activity with buttons. That activity put us thinking on how classify buttons. As a group we have to decide which of the charesterestics should go before another. It was intersesting how everybody had his own opinion on what should go first, second...

After we were done with our classification chart we realized that it is not perfect, what i mean by that, that some buttons that you gave us didn't fit in our chart very good. That made me realize that it is the same in real world (i mean with animals, not buttons), that after they discover something they should classify it. And sometimes it doesn't fit in their "chart". For it happened a lot after discovering microskope, because it helped to look at things closer.

While I was doing the classification of fishes of NY state, I game across bunch of problems: in some cases I could not tell if some details absent or present. I guess it would have been easer to classify those fishes if they were in front of you, alive, but it is not.

[Marcy Withrow]

When I first heard we were going to do biological classification (taxonomy) , I figured it would the simplest and easiest thing we have learned yet. Piece of cake right? Throwing organisms into different groups and naming them in Latin. That couldn’t be too hard. But, I was very, very wrong. It’s a lot more complicated than that! You have to decide where to put them and whether to go by their morphology or physiology (I still have no clue which one they use today).

Since people put them into these groups, the people who decide end up fighting. Everyone has different opinions on what should go where. I found this out while we were doing our “button lesson” in class. We had to agree together on what the next category would be. Once we had them all into the groups they needed to be, we discovered new ones. Then, we ended up debating on where they should go and the mess started all over again.

When it came to our homework I got an even bigger headache. I don’t like to have to decode things, because you don’t know if you got them right or not. But, after I learned the parts of a fish I got a better hang of it. I was still unsure of my answers though. So, after I did all that I could I went back to search what image fit the fish (that may have been cheating). But, I was getting really irritated. I also looked up all their scientific names. I see how the Genus goes with the type of fish. I think this worksheet helped me understand how genus and species works.

I think what I took from both of these lessons is that classifying organisms is kind of tough! Especially if it’s a new one. It wasn’t as hard to put a button where it needs to go. But, if you relate this to real life, I can’t imagine how hard of a job that would be! I’m pretty sure I would go insane. So, I give credit to those who do this for their career. That would take a lot of patience and dedication. Overall, I have a better idea of how taxonomy works and why we need it. It’s how everyone around the world can recognize the organism. Someone has to translate it, right? I think I’ll get better at it once I get just a tad bit more practice.

[Kylie Warner]

When we were introduced to this my intial thought was boring. haha. Classification seems like a pretty broad topic. Not to mention that we use it in every day life without noticing. But now I'm more excited to learn and go into more depth than just this marble and this one are the same because they are red.

I think that going into the words and talking more about genus and species was a good moment for me. I will admit that I still get them confused a little but it makes sense once I get them sorted out. I think that knowing the Latin is interesting. When we had to pick out which ones we believed were closely related I did the natural thing (I think) and picked the two I believed made the most sense to me. But when Mr. Nash explained that, even though they both had the name "Red" in them that didn't make them more alike than the two Maple trees. That was a: Ah..gotcha..moment for me. I think that I understand the morphology and physiology the most. It just kind of stuck with me and made sense, morphology is for looking, physiology is for function.

I think that doing the shoe and button project was fun. It was frustrating at some points but it was really interesting in the end to see how different people think and all the different ways that people can classify things. I think that I learned a lot to not only because I got to see how everyone else thinks but just making the chart and thinking more critically about which ways to classify things. Also choosing the right wording. Like when Mr. Nash came over to give us a test to see how each new button could fit into our own classification my group at first was like let's just make a new catagory. But when Mr. Nash said we can't, we had to think more dynamically about what we could right down that would fit in with the catagory we alreay have. I think that, that lesson alone will make me think and question how I word things with classification for now on. =)

[Taylor Woodruff]

Biological classification is something that I really like learning about. As we started this section this past week I thought it ws going to be a lot easier to learn that what it actually is. Sure, being able to classify an animal from a plant is easy, but when we had classify our shoes it was a lot harder than I thought it would be!

I never thought about how vague you have to be at the beginning of the classification chain. When we had to classify our buttons within our own groups, it took a lot more work than I had expected. We had to really think about being vague enough at the beginning so that if a new button would come along then it would easily be placed.

Doing these little things in class is really allowing me to understand how much scientists really have to use their noggin. Even though biological classification is a pretty easy concept to grasp, it still has more to it than I would have eve thought!

[Hannah Rush]

HAHAH! that picture is an example of an EPIC FAIL! =P

anywho..back to my reflection..

My thoughts about taxonomy are really vague so if anyone has anything to correct please feel free! I am still pretty unsure about the topic, but I think I have it figured out...i hope =P

In my own words, Taxonomy is the way in which different species are classified. The scientific name is written: Genus species. I learned that just because something is the same species, doesn't mean that it is closer related to something with the same genus. For example, a Red Oak and a Red Maple are not as closely related as a Red Maple and a Sugar Maple. Things are classified by their genus. We used shoes to help us understand this more clearly. That experiment really helped me understand classification more because I learned that really color is not the thing that matters the most when classifying things.

On Tuesday in class, we were given the difficult task of classifying buttons. I was really impressed with the way in which my group did. Pretty much....we NAILED our charts. At first, it seemed like this task would be one that would be really easy. Turns out, I was way wrong because I really had to think about how to make our chart so that a thrid group wouldn't be an issue. I learned that you don't always have to make a "third group". In fact, there are accomidations that you can make to your original 2 groups to avoid having to make 3 groups.

After finishing my dichotomus key worksheet, I'm left with a question.

1) The Rock Bass and the Large Mouthed/Small Mouthed Bass have different scientific names. For example, both the large and small mouthed bass' have the genus name Micropterus, but the Rock Bass' genus name is Ambloplites, why is it different? Same goes for the catfish and trout.

I am also still stuck on our million dollar question: Which is more important with regard to biological classification...Morphology or Physiology???

and just to end things on a light note... ;)

[Hunter Ewart]

Biological classifical. I beleive i have learnt this in another science class but i don't remember which. I dont think we actully got to classifie stuff like the shoe activity which was my favorite. It allowed us to use all of our brains together and come up with a chart. The button avtivity was the hardest one so far which made my brain cramp up. Trying to sort something as little a buttons can be very tricky.

All in alll i liked classifing the objects it allowed me to use my neat freak ways to sort objects that i wouldnt nessarally use everyday such as buttons. So far so good. Im just wondering what your going to make us ckassicife next.

[Blayr Bolton]

I'm going to go ahead and say straight forward that biological classification is sort of bitter sweet. It's sweet because we get to basically see how the living things in our world are classified and have a better understanding, yet again, of how this world works. We have done two simple activities with shoes and buttons, but there are scientists all around the world that do this for a living. They wake up and that's their job for the day, the year, and their life. Now that's something incredible right there. And the reason I say that it's bitter is because I find it to be somewhat difficult. For the moment, I have a hard time wrapping my head around these simple concepts and understanding the reasoning behind doing the activities.

I did enjoy those two class assignments with the shoes and the buttons, but I couldn't ever pin point the ultimate goal of classifying. Honestly, it seemed to be more of a fun, creative activity rather than one to explore and learn with, which isn't a bad thing, it's just how I felt about the whole situation. I can't say that I would ever biologically classify living organisms for a job because I don't have the patience or full understanding of the job. I'm hoping through more activities and time I'll realize exactly what this is all about, but for the moment I'm a little dazed and confused.

Although I am a little confused and unsure of what biological classification will bring to my development as a learner, I can say I'm still excited to see what happens with this unit. I have a hunch that I will learn a lot more than I think and get more out of this than I expect. For the mean time, I'm just kind of riding along to see where this road takes me. :)

[Amanda Dixon]

this confuses me!! you have to be soooo specific done to the very last thing. i wouldn't want to be the person who has to classify animals because the buttons drove me nuts! I didn't know that things were based on genus more the species, i always thought the opposite.

The shoe activity was interesting there are so many different things that you can classify by it's hard to pick one t hat will work for everything. the fish classification thing was really confusing you had to pay close attention to what you were doing.